Solid Lines of Broken Glass

The oval has its advantages and disadvantages

As long as it is runnable outside (and my broad definition of runnable is a ground without blatant snow or ice), it provides a labyrinth of sorting that removes much of the chafe and challenge of the road or sidewalk.

The first few laps are the blood vessels reacquainting themselves with what it feels like to truly open to the demands in front of them. A steady white ache in the legs that burns quickly, then transfers up into the airways; heart picking up speed, lungs quickening.

This is the gross of the gross, the top of the colander as the shakedown and sorting unfolds. It stays up top, fading a little, as the next levels drop

down

And we're into the world of breath and heart and muscles and time and mind. Not as in your face difficult as the first level for sure, but there are subtle demons that more or less pull out their deck chairs and settle in for the run. There is a stridency here, in spite of the laizzez fare attitude. Time is clearly the ring leader. Even when all else is settling into rhythmic trance, Time has but to raise the baton and everybody else is backseated to the push, pull or discomfort he decides to manifest.

This too, can be shaken down staying up top as the even finer level of the run settles down.

Will and Itent.

Two brothers, these: Will the stable and predictable; Intent, the well meaning but sometimes fragile of the two.

And below these

Is.

Follow the non-linear linear tangent, the laser line from the finest level of oval the the intuitive level outside of Oval.

This would be fine weather sidewalk barefooting; salted face and saline sheet pulled from the stars to skin surface level; portable shade slipping down the olfactory awning, sear and pull, sear and pull as steady as a commuter train as I roll on slightly downhill to the turaround point until

diamond in front of me; image sharpened by the dull of the shades, a shift out of harms way, followed by a decision tree.

To the left, intuition, IS, run without fear but without direction.

To the right, hierarchy and structure, linear thought, the steps that might deliver me safely from shredded feet.

Inevitably, the left wins. It HAS to win, if I have any hope of navigating these lines of broken glass. And the lines collect and disperse like water through a creekbed; swaths scattered by an invisible reclusive gem gardener. Each sparkle a part of the mandala that will be pushed and pulled by traffic and weather and feet and wheels and paws and dust and time. Each sparkle a little cutting machine.

So it's a chosen path to NOT think. To be, a little thanks with each step that no damage has been done, a little hope with each following step that no damage WILL be done. Each lift and pull of the nekkid foot a whirlpool of belief, faith, hope, and a little fear...

Mantra beyond mantra, just trying to be in the arms of the divine, knowing that karma and fate and will and luck and disregard are all playing a part, drifting like billowing silk over the melting tar and embedded ego-checkers, until I'm through.

IS as intuitive grappling

IS a place of No-Thought and being.

Still in the world of the dual, but inexorably bound to the non-dual.

Because 'Is' is the non-dual, another form appearing and dissolving in and off the oval.

namaste

Lilac Cathedral

So hot here, wet heat.

Part's internal - the controlled yo-yo of interval training, part of it is external - steam enveloping, relaxing, bringing up the core temp up bit by bit.

Close the eyes and mantra-up; thought recognition that established yogis are beyond hot and cold, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering. By that definition I am nowhere near established, but the mantra brings some fleeting relief.

Relief from what? I am the one who brought the exercise to the pulse; pulse in the body; body to the room where I now sit. I am the one who feels the desire of heated, steamed relief and relaxation even in the midst of a workout; I am the one who is sitting here, of my own volition. I WANT to be here. Human beings move towards pleasure and away from pain. There's a still-borne syllogism there. Even if fully articulated, it would fail the experience somehow because I am sitting in discomfort (pain and heat) for pleasure. Apparently, I want both.

Mantra is not strong enough here to take me to the place of no-pain; there are some rat-bastard demonoids that had happy-fun-time ravaging different levels of the gross-body the last two weeks, and they are having their last kick at the can before they can be expelled for good out of the system. They've fucked the equilibrium up, as has sleep and psychotropics and emotion and energy and the whole web, shimmering and sliding me in an only partly controlled free fall (more a free tumble) down the web to the end where I held on in rock climber's finger gripping grace and just managed to pull myself up and over.

So eyes are closed now, legs are dangling over the edge of silver web, and the mind's eye is open and I'm surrounded by a distanced white black screen

and now

floating down, tiny lilacs; one, two, then ...

walls of lilacs, and pillars in front of and holding up the walls. And great gothic arches sprouting windows and turrets and crosses and all of it Lilac.

i'm at the center now, standing and surrounded, the sitting me on the web in the steam room is somewhere connected but distant, it's just me and this Lilac cathedral

And the flowers extend and hold me now, and I am part of the castle, breathing in centuries and out eons, eyes exploding inward and outward; refuting physics in this tiny complete point that is everything because it is nothing

and that thought is whisked away because this is not a place for thought, just experience, or better yet just awareness playing.

A step up from awareness.

Manifestation between the causal and the subtle and the gross.

And it's flight that is delivered now, just above the walls and floors and spires and basements of the cathedral; everything Lilac, I am lilac, and I am being delivered it seems to the spire of spires where on toes and arms extended backwards I sing in ecstasy as

the steam rolls in

and I'm bounced to the web, off the web to the benched room where causal, subtle and gross gel into Me again.

puka.